Crash cooling

I did some searching through the forums on crash cooling but couldn't find what I was looking for. Is crash cooling necessary? Does it have any effect on taste or is it purely to help clear the beer? I usually just rack to the keg from my secondary because I don't have room to put my carboy in the fridge.

It is primarily an aid in clearing beer. As yeast flocculate more at colder temperatures, it helps some of the more stubborn yeast drop out of solution to further clear the beer. It depends a bit on how anal you are about your beer clarity. It has little or no impact on flavor, and is not necessary.

Thanks, that is what I thought but wanted to make sure. At this point I am not that worried about clarity I am trying to get good flavor down then I can start worrying about perfecting how the beer looks.

Clearing your beer may give it less of a "yeasty" taste. This is more appropriate for some styles than others. I find that particularly when using Wyeast 2565 Kolsch the flavor will benefit from some time in the fridge before drinking. IMO beers that have been cold conditioned a bit often tend to have a cleaner, more crisp flavor.

As for clarity, you can also achieve this with a nice long time in secondary, if you don't have space in your fridge. Cold crashing for 24 hours between primary and secondary and/or between carboy and keg can lead to a substantial reduction in the amount of trub entering the new vessel and improvement in final clarity.

It's a nice thing to do if you have the fridge space and the inclination to move your beer. If not, no big deal.

Cold crashing will also help drop out proteins, even ones that can cause chill haze. Some of these proteins do have an impact on flavor. Cold crashing will improve the beer.

It takes more than just a day to get more than just yeast out. However adding gelatin to the cold green beer can do wonders in just two days.